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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29007351">Sisters Torn Together</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daxe_Thorson/pseuds/Jazset'>Jazset (Daxe_Thorson)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Owl House (Cartoon)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Death, Child Death, Dissociation, Drug Abuse, Drug Use, F/F, I didn't invent this idea, I just made it better lmao, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, MST3K mantra in full effect, Sibling AU, ghost au, no betas we die like witches, original idea by molotov-does-stuff.tumblr.com, read the tags</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:07:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,378</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29007351</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daxe_Thorson/pseuds/Jazset</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ghosts aren't talked about a lot on the Boiling Isles.<br/>Oh, they exist; They can be seen by some Oracles, some stranger people...<br/>but every ghost haunts someone. Every ghost has a last tether to the real world.<br/>No matter how close or far you are.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Amity Blight &amp; Edric Blight, Amity Blight &amp; Edric Blight &amp; Emira Blight, Amity Blight &amp; Edric Blight &amp; Emira Blight &amp; Luz Noceda, Amity Blight &amp; Emira Blight, Amity Blight &amp; Luz Noceda, Amity Blight/Luz Noceda, Eda Clawthorne &amp; Lilith Clawthorne, Edric Blight &amp; Emira Blight</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sisters Torn Together</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/BogDog/gifts">BogDog</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/MolotovGoesBoom/gifts">MolotovGoesBoom</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drabbles_Of_Writing/gifts">Drabbles_Of_Writing</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><strong>Please read the tags!</strong> This gets dark at moments!<br/>Inspired mostly by the AU <a href="https://bs-trio-does-stuff.tumblr.com/post/640579075095822336/toh-siblings-au-but-make-it-worse-whats-up">here</a>. Original writers are <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/BogDog/pseuds/BogDog">Bog</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/MolotovGoesBoom/pseuds/MolotovGoesBoom">Gage</a>, and <a href="https://crispyclown.tumblr.com/">Clain</a>. I've been told to call them the “Three Gay Idiots” from the <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastaTiger">@pastatiger</a> discord, where I originally posted this oneshot.<br/>The sibling au I'm imagining is also inspired by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drabbles_Of_Writing">Drabble's</a> work.<br/>Lucille == Luz's younger sister, ~12 yo, based on the pilot designs for Luz<br/>Lucia == Luz's older sister, ~20 yo, based on the Beta designs for Luz<br/>Amber == Amity's younger sister, ~Lucille's age, has a puppy love romance with Lucille, based on the pilot designs for Amity<br/>Amelia == Amity's oldest sister, ~Lucia's age, has a whole Enemies to lovers thing going on with Lucia, based on Beta Amity designs<br/>Salix == Willow's older sister, ~Amelia/Lucia's age, based on Beta Willow designs.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lucille is alone.<br/>
Lucille is being pressed for information, because maybe the Nocedas aren’t hardened criminals but they’re a lifeline for Belos's human world plan.<br/>
When she has nothing to give them, she's still something to use. When Eda and Lilith finally trace the owl mask to where Lucille was taken, she's not there. Belos isn't there. It takes them a while to figure out what happened, and it's better that the two oldest of the Owl House are the ones to find out like this because...<br/>
Lucille didn't die quietly. She didn't die screaming. She died crying, alone, in pain, waiting and hoping for someone to show up and find her. She'd left so many clues and it wasn't enough.</p><p>No one takes it well. No one knows what to say for months.<br/>
When Lucille finally wakes up and stabilizes her ghost form, she's missed the funeral. She doesn't know where her gravestone is or what it says. It takes her some time to even realize she died.<br/>
She spends weeks among the dearly departed, trying to figure out what to do. The boiling isles are dangerous and insane, and the etherial plane is no better for all that it's lacking in proper physics.<br/>
It takes time before she can confront her siblings. She has at this point realized that the dead tell no tales -- ghosts can be seen by but a select few, and often only one or two ghosts for the person. Something about how being haunted works, means that you don't choose who you get to be seen by -- who you, in the parlance of this new space, end up 'haunting'. She hopes it's Eda, or Lilith -- they'd understand, and her sisters might not.</p><p>It's not Eda, it's not Lilith. It's not King or Hooty. It's not her sisters. It's not her mother, either. She can tell -- none of them are aware of her like the haunted are aware of their ghosts.</p><p>Lucille needs her time to handle being cut off from her family. She visits Hexside only once, and nearly comes to Amber's classroom, but the fear is too much -- She isn't haunting anyone she <s>loves</s> cares about except Amber, and it's no more likely to be her than any of them. And Lucille has figured out (she was -- is -- a smart girl, smarter than anyone gave her credit for) that it's sense of self that retains a ghost. She pulled herself out of memories of pain the day she woke up, but if she falls into emotional pain, there's no telling how long it would be until she came back again.<br/>
<em>If</em> she comes back a second time.<br/>
Lucille takes -- days? weeks? months? it's hard to tell time when you don't sleep and spend so much time away from natural light -- she takes a time to recompose herself. To armor her mind, in case she doesn't find who she's haunting. In the meantime, she hears some news.<br/>
Belos' control is crumbling. When Lucille died, the Owl house went dark for mourning, but now it's a <em>bona fide</em> war room. The rebellion is in full swing, they're going to shred the Emperor at the rate they're going.<br/>
No one says it in the living's land, but the dead know it's for Lucille Noceda. She galvanized them all in a way Belos hadn't predicted. It's... touching.</p><p>But time and terror await no child, and Lucille has one option left to try. One chance to be with someone she loves.<br/>
She comes to the Blight manor in the evening. Mr. and Mrs. Blight never come here anymore -- the older twins actually kicked them out, took over the mansion for themselves. (The adult Blights knew better than to get too invested in the war anyways. When their children turned on them, they took the better part of valor and moved to their summer home, on a quaint little island leagues and leagues away from the Titan itself.)<br/>
She comes in the evening, and the door is closed, but that's nothing to a ghost. She walks right through the solid wooden doors towering above her, into the foyer where she first saw Amber in a dress instead of her dull Hexside uniform.</p><p>She can't do this.<br/>
She has to do this.</p><p>She presses onwards. The sound comes from the kitchen. It sounds like it comes from underwater, but that means nothing -- everything these days sounds like it comes from underwater. Maybe it's just her.<br/>
And there, seated around a large table, eating ration-grade dinners and having a not-very-serious discussion about war, sit all seven Blight siblings.</p><p>Lucille locks eyes with Amber, Amber locks eyes with her. They hadn't learned much about ghosts in Hexside but surely Amber knew how to spot a ghost by now -- if Amber... if... if it was Lucille, she would have buried herself in anything that could give her one day more.</p><p>There's a gasp. Someone drops a fork.</p><p>Amber looks away. Her eyes never focused on Lucille.</p><p>Lucille considers, in this moment, what to do to quell the screaming. Distantly she sees Amelia excuse herself, knock shoulders with Lucille, and run off. But it doesn't register to Lucille, because suddenly it's too loud, it's all too loud.<br/>
<em>It wasn't Amber.</em><br/>
<em>It wasn't a Noceda.</em><br/>
<em>It wasn't the Owl House.</em></p><p><em>It wasn't</em> anyone.</p><p>She'd prepared for this, but all of that falls away. She disappears from the mansion, lands somewhere unfamiliar, somewhere far away. Somewhere she doesn't recognize. No mental armor could protect her from her own poisonous hope.</p><p>It only takes her a week, this time, to wake up again.<br/>
Distantly, she thinks that's a good sign. A week is a quarter of the time it was then when she... well.<br/>
It doesn't feel like good time. It feels like she nearly lost herself forever.<br/>
It feels like she <em>is</em> lost forever. She has no idea who she's haunting or how she'll ever find them. Some oracles can see all ghosts, can find your haunted for you, but it's not pleasant to be around those types -- at best they're businesslike, spiteful, like the people Lucia always hated. At worst they're as lost as she was, for all the neurons they had of themselves that she doesn't.</p><p>She still doesn't recognize where she is. In a forest, probably still on the Titan, but... it's not an area she's ever been to before. She... she lets herself wander for a lost time. These woods block the sun enough, and she never sleeps besides, so Lucille doesn't know how long she just... exists... in the woods.</p><p>Then she finds a hut. A little hovel in the woods, something that looks quaint.<br/>
Lucille knows this hut. Well, she's never seen it before, but she knows Lucia's little dirty deeds on both sides of the world, knows enough to know what a drug stash looks like. (Lucia never wanted Lucille close, but Lucille is smarter than anyone gave her credit for. She's seen these for all she hasn't seen this.)<br/>
In a fit of passing fancy, she enters, looks around. She can't quite move the door, or the lids, or the cupboard covers, but she can peer through them anyways.</p><p>It's wine, mostly. Wine, beer, vodka -- alcohols of the boiling isles. She doesn't know it truly but she can tell.<br/>
Strangely enough, there's a cot here, too. Do people sleep here when they smuggle goods? Well, if you cover well, the authorities <em>might</em> pass you on patrol, presuming of course that's the idea.</p><p>There's a noise at the door. Lucille jumps, but then settles. It's just a living, coming in no doubt to take stock. Lucille doesn't need to hide from sounds below water anymore, she's learned that since.<br/>
There's a gasp. It's above water.<br/>
Lucille turns, and there in the doorway is Amelia, staring straight through her. (Amelia, Lucille notices as she tries to stay here and now, looks like shit. She's got an empty bottle in one hand, and she's leaning a bit into the door. Her makeup is ruined, her hair is covered in leaves. Her eyes are staring shock still, likely at something behind Lucille. After all, the dead don't see the living.)<br/>
"...Lucille?"<br/>
... Amelia is looking at Lucille. In the eye. She's talking in the sound the dead make. But Amelia can't be dead, because her footfalls are through water, her bottle clattering to the ground is through water, but the hug is solid. Amelia is crying and holding her and it's ugly crying and Amelia looks like she wants to scream and throw her but Lucille can't really tell because she thinks she's crying, too. She thinks it hurts to die. She thinks it hurts to be alone. She didn't want to die, and she did anyways.</p><p>Lucille hold Amelia like a lifeline. She's been so alone in an indescribable way but Amelia makes her feel so much less alone. She doesn't want to lose herself again -- twice was three times too many -- but losing Amelia would be worse. She doesn't know what Amelia should do but it's enough to hold her here.<br/>
(Amelia always protected her siblings. She was the oldest one, the one most durable. She was the one who tried hardest to notice Amity crying herself to sleep when she had to abandon Willow, she was the one to pull ashes of dresses her siblings weren't 'supposed' to have out of the fire, she was the one who her parents escalated on. She could take it.)</p><p>It's Lucille who hears it first. Someone's coming. But the way Amelia tightens on Lucille is what tips her off that it's not a friendly. Though the shouting would have done that as well.<br/>
(She moved out when she could, to provide a save haven for her siblings. It wasn't perfect, but no one else could help against the Blight family's internal strife. At least, Amelia believed no one who could also would, so she never made the mistake of finding out.)</p><p>Lucille slips for the larger girl's drunken grip -- Amelia smells of booze and tears, though for what reason Lucille knows not -- and goes to the door, through the door, sees the pursuers. They don't see her. They can't see her.<br/>
(When the Nocedas came to town, Amelia didn't think of them as siblings. Lucia was a sin against her life, and Luz got Amity in trouble at school. And Trouble At School Means Trouble At Home, And We Don't Want Any Trouble At Home, Do We?)<br/>
(She warmed to the youngest one quicker, though. That little one was smart, and had a way with Amber that Amelia wished sometimes she had.)</p><p>Lucille doesn't recognize any of Amelia's pursuers. But they're Emperor's coven, it's all over them, and they're surrounding Amelia's stash hideout.<br/>
(Amelia was an older sister all the way down, and she looked out for Amber, and that meant looking out for Amber's people.)<br/>
(Oh, she'd warmed to the rest of the Nocedas, after a time, but it was Lucille that had convinced her to give Luz and Lucia a chance. Lucille was always the best of them, even when Lucia had kissed her and held her close and taught her what love for people who weren’t blood related felt like.)</p><p>They’re drawing their staves. Lucille realizes they’re here to kill Amelia, and things start to get loud.<br/>
(It hadn’t quite broken her, when the war began. It had chipped her to realize they were in war. It had scratched her to know that Lucille had died. It had torn her it see Amber collapse, fold up, cry and cry until she couldn’t even do that.)<br/>
(But Amelia hadn’t broken; she never quite had had the luxury of being breakable. She simply drank more to cope. A terrible plan, but Lucia was still there at least to carry her out of the bars when she couldn’t quite walk straight.)<br/>
(It was Emira who helped Amelia get herself under control, and for time infinite Emira might be her favorite just for that, but all of them watched Amber slowly, surely, pick up her mourning pieces and start looking in the sun again. It was beautiful, for all depressing thoughts it drew.)</p><p>They’re going to take her away. They can’t take her awa<em>y, they can’t do it, she c<strong>an’t let them do it.</strong></em><br/>
(That night a week ago threw her well off the wagon. She’d gotten a light buzz at a party celebrating their recent win, and she hadn’t thought it was much of a buzz, until she hallucinated—)<br/>
((Well. <em>Thought</em> she hallucinated.))<br/>
(—until she saw Lucille, eyes bright white, feet not touching the ground, skin replaced with scar tissue, drip right into their planning room and look right at Amber.)<br/>
(She’d ran to her room, locked it, chugged an entire bottle of what Lucia called Everclear. It was too much, it was all too much. She ran away to Lucia, to their wine stash, spent days nursing an old cure to pain like this. It was too much, it took her from over her pain to right in the middle of the funeral.)<br/>
Ț̯̙̻̘̘́h̹͚̠̩̫ͅe̟̣̬̰͕͎͖y̬͍ ̪̖c͇̖̥̦a̱ͅn̥̭̺̯̣̰͟'̭̤̰͙͙̘t̟̝͎̬̟̱ ̥t͉̣̭̰̮a̡̝͔͙̳k̻͈͈e̫̪ ̟͚͈̩͔̀h̗̟̙͢e̵͍͈r͢ ͎͓̦t͖͍h̥̫͖̻e͓̹͖ͅͅy̜̟ ̮͇̯̠͜w̡͉̠̖̪o͚̝̺̤ͅ<em>ǹ͇͚͇͖'̲̻̻͈̬̥͠t͉̞̀ t͉͙̪a̤͎k͜e͇̹̫͟ ̞̰̳̠̭͕͘h͙͚͖͎͍é̯̯̺r ̜͇̰y͏o̰̬͢u̹̪̗̹̗̜̦ w̶o̶͖̝̮̗̺n̸̖͍̥͍͕͓ͅ'͏̮͉̳̖t̛̖̯ ͎̭̭̘͉̳l̳̠̜͉͙̞ͅ_͖̘͖_̖̺̮̲̖͙̟͠e͏͍̞̤̱͔t͚̼̩͎͕̘͕ ̙̻t̷͕͉̬̞h̙̙͚̮́e̡̻͔̬͈m̫̺̲̠ ̨y͉̦̝ͅò̱̦̗u͔̟̳̯͡ ̫͍͔̘̝̗̟w̨̮̙͈̱o̬͍n͙ͅ'͜t̵̘̼ ͇̯́y̟̖̻͇̯<strong>o̮͇̠̟̮ṵ̱͎̯ ̭̙W̡͇̱̣͙̙O̱͕̞̩̗̥͜N҉̜̲̠̤̳̼'̢̥̭̼̝T̰͕̼ L͉̞̘͚͓̮ͅE̕T̪̹̖̠͔ ̮͉͕̙͘ͅͅT̪̰͓H͚̦̫͕̝E̮͇Ṃ̫͓ ̶̖̼̺̖̞̝H̵͇̻̲U͇̰̖̕R̭T̖̭̝̺̝͚ ̶̝H̯̘̀E̮̗͍͓̬̙̳R̛̞̦̖_̰͔̱_̲̭̳͚</strong></em><br/>
(She admitted to Salix she was seeing things too painful to look at without beer goggles, for all the hangovers and puking was fucking her up. Salix looked sad but didn’t stop her and still held her hair back when her body tried to stop her. It was too much to remember or think about, how she’d failed her little sister’s girlfriend and her girlfriend’s little sister. How it felt like <em>your fault, your fault, you were always the one looking after them.</em> And now she was being haunted by the image of Lucille and she couldn’t handle being around anyone other than Salix and herself.)<br/>
(She nearly died out here in these woods, drinking and drinking and not eating enough. And then Lucille returned and hugged her and she still couldn’t handle the sight of so much pain, but it was <em>real, it was real…</em>)</p><p>(After all, dead bodies from drunken hallucinations don’t smell so bad when scattered across a forest field.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I don't have plans for any follow up. Because I'm at heart an optimist, I'd like for it to turn out that Lucille isn't a normal ghost and can come back, but... well, I leave that ending up to you, the reader.<br/>Also, in case it wasn't clear, <strong>Lucille and Amelia are not a ship!</strong> Their actual relationship, besides ghost and haunted, is purely platonic. I simply thought that Amelia's protectiveness and their comparatively weak relationship otherwise would make the haunting aspect much more moving than any other character around Lucille.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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